FuelCell Energy, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Fuel Energy's second quarter 2020 earnings call. At this time, participant lines are on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you require any assistance at any time, Please press star zero and an operator will come back online to assist you. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Galston, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. This morning, Fuel Cell Energy released our financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2020. and the earnings release is available on the investor relations section of our website at fuelcellenergy.com. Consistent with our practice, in addition to this call and our press release, we have posted a slide presentation on our website. This webcast is being recorded and will be available for replay on the company's website approximately two hours after the conclusion of the call. Before we begin our prepared comments, please direct your attention to the disclosure statement on slide two of the presentation and the disclaimers including in the press release related to forward-looking statements. The discussion today will contain forward-looking statements including, without limitation, statements with respect to the company's anticipated financial results and statements regarding the company's plans and expectations regarding the continued development, commercialization and financing of its fuel cell technology and its business plans. These forward-looking statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made on this call today, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements and include statements regarding our anticipated financial and operational performance. Forward-looking statements made on this call represent management's current expectations and are based on information available at the time such statements are made. Forward-looking statements involve numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from any results predicted, assumed, or implied by the forward-looking statement. We strongly encourage you to review the information in the reports we file with the SEC regarding these risks and uncertainties, in particular those that are described in the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K and cautionary statements concerning forward-looking statements disclosure in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. You should also review the section entitled quarterly statement concerning forward-looking statements in this morning's earnings press release. During this call, we will use non-GAAP financial measures when talking about the company's performance and financial condition. In accordance with SEC regulations, you can find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures in this morning's earnings press release and the reconciliation document posted on our investor relations portion of our website. For our call today, I am joined by Jason Few, Fuel Cell Energy's president and chief executive officer, and Mike Bishop, executive vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer. Following our prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions and be joined by other team members of the leadership team. And we'll now hand the call over to Jason for opening remarks.

Jason? Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. These are unprecedented times. Before we get started, on behalf of the Fuel Cell Energy team, I want to say that our thoughts and prayers are with those directly impacted by the ongoing global pandemic, and I want to thank the medical professionals, first responders, and other essential workers who are bravely performing their jobs under improving but yet very difficult circumstances. I will give an update on the impact of COVID-19 on our company later in my prepared remarks. In light of the recent public events, I want to reaffirm Fuel Cell Energy's commitment to diversity and inclusion in every aspect of our business. Our commitment to enable the world to live a life empowered by clean energy requires a diverse and talented team. I also want to thank the entire Fuel Cell Energy team. During this time of global challenge and uncertainty, we remain focused and committed to continued execution of our powerhouse strategy, and I am proud of the team's dedication and the results we have been able to achieve this quarter. Last, I want to thank the Board of Directors for its support of our global team and enabling us to retain our team members on payroll with benefits despite our manufacturing facility shutdown thus enabling us to hit the ground running upon our reopening. Coming out of our difficult fiscal We were poised to execute on our new powerhouse business strategy. The unexpected onset of COVID-19 has slowed some of the progress we had hoped to make by delaying bids and project solicitations and challenging our sales efforts as our customers around the world struggle to address the business challenges brought on by this virus. As businesses slowly reopen and markets rebound, We anticipate a return to our pre-virus sales efforts and initiatives. As in previous quarters, we have included an overview of the company for those of you who may be less familiar with our business. On slide three, we have a snapshot of our revenue breakdown for our most recent full fiscal year. The fiscal year ended October 31, 2019. During fiscal year 2019, We recorded approximately $61 million of total revenue, with the three largest categories, service and licenses, advanced technologies, and generation providing diversified sources of recurring revenue. I will also highlight some of the well-recognized customers shown near the top of the slide, with whom we have multi-year contracts. We anticipate that these existing customers, as well as our future customers, will benefit from the ongoing product enhancements we make to our technology platform, including our extended stack life, which is now up to seven years, combined heat and power systems, enabling microgrids, on-site hydrogen generation, and future commercialization of our solid oxide platform capabilities to deliver electrolysis, long-duration hydrogen-based energy storage, and zero-carbon hydrogen power generation. Moving to slide four. Our purpose, which is to enable the world to live a life empowered by clean energy, guides our strategy, our people, and the work we do. It also guides our strategic focus and the innovations we are commercializing. Said simply, it is who we are. Now, turning to the key takeaways for the quarter on slide five. Overall, we delivered a good second quarter results, but I am particularly proud of the team's execution during this period in which we were faced with unique challenges of the pandemic. Second, we continued to deliver disciplined management of our operating expenses and improve both our gross margins and operating loss, driven by an increase in our differentiated work on our carbon capture under our JDA with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering. Third, We continue to execute on our powerhouse business strategy across our global operating model, resulting in some significant achievements during the quarter. In April, we began commercial operation of the Triangle Street project in the hometown of our headquarters, Danbury, Connecticut, after completion of testing and design optimization. This represents our first deployment of the SureSource 4000 high electrical efficiency platform and is another demonstration of the power of our platform to deliver distributed generation in an urban setting. Also in April, we begin site construction of a 1.4 megawatt SureSource 1500 biofuel project with the City of San Bernardino Municipal Water Department in California, which we expect to be commercially operational near the end of calendar 2020. This project provides yet another operating example of the power of our multi-fuel platform, our proprietary gas cleanup system, and the unique position our SureSource platform occupies as the only CARB-DG certified distributed generation solution operating on anaerobic digester gas. In May, We announced a significant energy output milestone by delivering more than 10 million megawatt hours of clean energy across three continents from our SureSource fuel cell power platforms since our first commercial installation in 2003. On June 7th, Fuel Cell Energy celebrated its 20th year as a NASDAQ listed company. I want to thank our board of directors, team members, customers, and our stockholders for your continued support of Fuel Cell Energy. Fourth, to be able to continue executing on our business strategy despite the business effects of COVID-19, we have taken action to ensure liquidity through the next 12 months by securing a secondary loan commitment from Orion Energy Partners of up to $35 million for working capital and general corporate purposes. Mike will provide additional details during his prepared remarks. Consistent with our purpose, we continue to strive to be a leader in sustainability and environmental stewardship. Looking ahead, Fuel Cell Energy remains focused on four of the largest global energy opportunities. One, distributed base load generation. Two, distributed hydrogen generation. Three, carbon capture. And four, our solid oxide platform, which provides electrolysis, We continue to believe that carbon capture is key to meeting global goals for reducing the world's carbon footprint without requiring most of the world to forgo technological advancements enabled by abundant energy. We believe that fuel cell energy's carbon capture technology is currently the only known method that captures carbon while simultaneously producing more power. Together with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, we continue to develop our fuel cell technology that has the ability to concentrate CO2 across industrial applications, coal and gas fire power plants while also producing power from the fuel cell stack. And finally, I will give a brief update on how we are managing our business in light of COVID-19. First, we continue to pray for the health and safety of our global team, our customers, friends, neighbors, and communities. We took actions in the early days of this crisis prior to the government-mandated restrictions to enact safety precautions, including work-from-home mandates where possible, and the closure of our manufacturing operation in Torrington, Connecticut. We have remained in contact with global team members, suppliers, and customers to share information and minimize interruptions to our business plan as much as possible. Now that efforts are underway to reopen society under a controlled plan, we are planning to begin reopening our Torrington, Connecticut manufacturing facility on June 22nd. While the shutdown of our manufacturing facility was in effect, We continue the construction of our 7.4 megawatt project at the Navy Submarine Brace in Groton, Connecticut, and commence construction at the San Bernardino Biofuel Project. We will utilize a staggered approach to reopen our offices, and we will continue to remain in compliance with all rules and regulations, including continued use of social distancing protocols and work from home where possible. We have secured the necessary PPE for all of our team members, and we have modified workspaces to promote social distancing. Of course, we will continue to monitor the situation and adjust our operations as necessary. And now, I will turn the call over to Mike to discuss our financial results in more detail. Mike?